• Interesting route to the competition venue: Bangalore-Mumbai-Johannesburg-Sao Paulo-Santiago. Four flights, four countries, two domestic airports and three international airports, a 44-hour journey including flights and transits.

Team reaches the venue just two days before their first match. Another airline flies from Bangalore to Santiago through Frankfurt with only one change of aircraft. Perhaps the travel agents found it more profitable to send the team through a strenuous route and in a less comfortable airline. But then, who cares?

• Chhatrapati International Airport, Mumbai, March 12, 1 am: Back from Santiago, via Sao Paulo and Johannesburg. Thirty-four hours of agony. Landed with a mentally and physically exhausted team — lambs for the slaughter. Suddenly an army of TV crews and media appears — some even ask the players to smile for the camera. One player asks me: “Do you think they would have come to welcome us if we had qualified for the Olympics?”

• Mumbai domestic airport, 2 am:

Departure lounge, players troop in. not one empty chair around. Sleepy, tired players crowd around their baggage; one comments: “Let us get into the toilets and sit there till boarding.” I approach the supervisor at the counter, introduce myself and request the officer chairs for the players. The flight is at 7 am. The reply is curt: “Sorry, we’re helpless, if they can’t find any vacant chair, they have to find some other way out.”

Then a foreigner walks in. The supervisor checks him in, calls out to one of his staff and asks her to take him to the VIP lounge. I protest. The supervisor has an explanation. “He is a business class ticket holder, a VIP,” he says. A few currency notes can buy you a VIP status but a national player in his own country is a pariah.

• Mumbai domestic airport, 3 am:

A dozen players had Mumbai- Bangalore return tickets. While booking they were told they could reroute from Mumbai to their respective hometowns. Now the airline says no rerouting. Hometowns remain distant.